Oh, Ranger. He’d shaved, dressed in a collared, short-sleeve shirt, a clean pair of cargo shorts, a pair of flip-flops—reminded her completely of the man she’d met once upon a sunset. His arms were tucked behind his back.

“Please. Take her off my hands.” Her dad stepped back. “But don’t get home too late.”

Her dad winked at her, patted Ranger’s shoulder, then headed into the house.

Ranger smiled at her. “Put on a pretty dress. I’m taking you out.”

“A pretty—”

He held out a bag. “Got ya something.”

She reached in and pulled out a dress, creamy white, sleeveless, filmy. “Trying to relive a memory?”

He leaned down, put his arm around her waist and pulled her to himself. “Or make new ones,” he said into her ear.

Then he kissed her. He was the night, sensuous, surprising, sweet. He tasted of danger and when he trailed a kiss down her neck, then caught her face in his hand, she raised an eyebrow. “Are we going to make it to dinner?”

“Go upstairs and change,” he said, his blue eyes on hers. “But better hurry—you take too long, and the answer will be no.”

She laughed as he let her go.

And then she headed upstairs.

It might take her quite a while.

After all, it took time to save the world.

ELEVEN

Colt just needed some air.

Not that he didn’t have enough fresh air out by the pool at the Marshall mansion, but somehow walking along the beach, his feet bare in the sand, the surf curling around his ankles, soapy and cool, the moon hanging like a smile in the darkness . . . It allowed him to slow his heartbeat, spool out his thoughts.

Get some distance between his idiot self and the guy who needed to get his head in the game.

Tonight. They would roll out tonight, and sure, it seemed like an op that he’d done a thousand times before, but this time . . .

This time his brothers were involved.

Maybe that’s why Colt’s chest hurt, why he’d felt a little out of breath tonight when he sat with Ham and the guys and mapped out the mission.

He had never felt this stirred up over a mission since . . .

Yeah, okay, maybe he’d been a little more amped when he’d rescued his brothers in South Sudan. But still, this mission, despite Ranger’s strategy, the workup, the contingency plans—frankly, Ranger had thought of everything—had Colt’s chest in a knot.

Or was it Tae? The fact that he knew he’d hurt her. Of course he’d hurt her. He hadn’t gone looking for her in the evenings, after bringing her home from the lab, despite watching her from his balcony as she sat by the pool with Zoey.